They never talked about their plans indoors in case a building was bugged, avoided ATM and traffic cameras while driving to and from their crime scenes, wore socks over their shoes to prevent traceable footprints, and changed their vehicle tires after an arson, discarding the old treads in multiple locations. She and other ELF “elves,” as they called themselves, were meticulous when it came to covering their tracks. Overaker participated in three more arsons over the next two years before agreeing to help with Vail. (Despite those claims, according to FBI agent Tim Suttles, who has worked the case since 2006, the Family’s alignment with ELF stemmed solely from seeing someone wearing an ELF T-shirt at a festival and deciding their missions overlapped.) They’d burned federal buildings in Oregon and Washington, claiming responsibility under the banners of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), two UK-based organizations that acted in defense of natural entities. By the time the septet drove to Eagle County in three vehicles in early October 1998, the record shows, they were prolific arsonists and revered in some activist circles, even if no one knew their identities. And today, of the 18 suspects who were indicted for the Family’s crimes and the 7 who were charged with the arson of Vail, Overaker is the only fugitive.īurning Vail Mountain became the Family’s signature act, but it followed a long run of smaller-scale precedents in the Pacific Northwest, according to court documents detailing their spree and interviews with active and retired law-enforcement officers. Yet more than 20 years later, Overaker remains at large.
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We all thought, here’s this hippie chick, kind of a free spirit, she’s not going to go deep underground. “But I remember there was not this sense of urgency, like, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to find Sunshine, because if we don’t we’ll never see her again!’ She was kind of a vagabond. “In retrospect, I guess we should’ve been paying more attention to where she was,” says retired FBI agent Jane Quimby, who led the Vail investigation from Denver.
She was one of the Family’s most prolific members, having participated in eight arsons in three years, but she’d disappeared more than a year earlier. When the Takedown unfolded, however, Overaker was nowhere to be found. It marked the beginning of the end for the Family, a tight-lipped cell of environmental and animal extremists responsible for more than 40 criminal acts over six years, including the Vail arson, which resulted in $24.5 million in damage. The mastermind, William “Avalon” Rodgers-who’d selected Vail as a target, conducted reconnaissance, and ultimately had run more than a mile of alpine ridgeline in the dark, igniting buildings as he went-was snared as part of a nationwide bust on December 7, 2005, that the FBI dubbed the Takedown. Eventually, six of those seven would be caught and arrested. As the detective on duty with the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO), McWilliam knew almost immediately that the fire was not the work of nature: “You can’t have eight different structures on fire spread out over a mile and not have arson.”Īlthough only two people were charged with actually committing the act, the FBI determined that five others had helped plan and orchestrate it, including a 23-year-old herbalist and wildland firefighter named Josephine Sunshine Overaker. He could see the orange glow from his driveway. They called 911 at 4:10 a.m.īefore long, word reached Mike McWilliam at his home in Edwards: much of Vail Mountain was on fire. A trio of hunters had been camping at the top of the mountain that night, and when they woke up to crackling outside their tent, they found PHQ engulfed in flames-and the entire sky aglow. Four minutes after that, at 3:58 a.m., an alarm activated at Two Elk Lodge. Twenty-four minutes later, an alarm sounded at Camp 1, a mile east. Logging was slated to begin on October 19, a Monday.Īt 3:30 that morning, a fire alarm went off at Vail’s Ski Patrol Headquarters (PHQ).
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That summer, a series of protests tried to stall the work again, to no avail. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club and Colorado Wild had fought the expansion in court for years. To create ski runs in Blue Sky, the resort was planning to clear more than 800 acres of old-growth forest where lynx and elk lived. The valley was preparing to host the World Alpine Ski Championships in a few months, and a long-in-the-works expansion into Blue Sky Basin, on the south side of Vail Mountain, finally had been given a green light by the US Forest Service.
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